


Send Them Off!

by eruriotica (minxiebutt)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Afterlife, Assisted Suicide, Bottom Erwin Smith, Demon Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin), Drowning, M/M, Priest Erwin Smith, Religious Content, Resurrection, Self-Harm, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2018-12-27 07:43:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12076611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minxiebutt/pseuds/eruriotica
Summary: The world is losing its glimmer. Erwin saw glimpses of Hell through Levi and now nothing wonderful compares. All Erwin sees is the suffering and it makes his heart squeeze with yearning for things divine. Slowly, Erwin begins to resent his congregation, the gift of their painless forgiveness. The joy he used to feel when he preached to them is replaced with bone-grinding weariness, because he knows that none will take his lessons to heart as dearly as Levi did, none will repent as devoutly. None compare.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GallifreyanPhD](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GallifreyanPhD/gifts).



> [listen](https://youtu.be/vn-6fiVkAcA)

The priest holds service for a singular demonic creature on Sunday nights. It is clear to him, from the very first of their private congregations, that if humans’ repentance was paid from their flesh like it is paid by this creature, they might put down their masquerade and live proper holy lives. Their forgiveness is a painless one: a soft, quiet plea for their sins, an absolution, a song, parting prayer. They have the benefit of mindless trespassing, sins so excusable that they can, in confession, say _‘all those times’_ and move on.

  
But that is not the case for this creature. His flesh burns with the communion and his voice shreds and screeches in agony with prayer, but he completes it. Every week, he names off every sin, he atones so wholly, so mindfully. It is the only way to keep himself out of Hell, he informs the priest.

  
Father Erwin Smith can tell which weeks when the demon’s conscience is most plagued. He does not grit his teeth against the pain of blistering skin burning and resewing itself whole, over and over, when he touches a Bible or hymnal. Those weeks, Erwin does not perform from the pulpit, but in the pew, at the demon’s side. Intimately, he kisses the demon’s ear, whispers, “How many, my child?”

  
“One” some weeks, “two” others, a single time, “eight.” Erwin leads him through the death rites, reciting for each.

  
“I started saying it,” the demon tells him two years into their arrangement, “when I….”

  
“That is proper, Levi,” Erwin says. He cannot praise the demon for glimpses of kindness during murder and blood-drinking. He wonders, does Levi’s body betray him wildly when he spouts the holy words, or is that a symptom found solely on holy ground? Does Levi whisper it, hunched over his victims, his fangs in their throats, his hands--

  
Levi’s hands have a sweet way of winding around Erwin’s shoulders when he’s caught in the grips of salvation, when God glances upon His lost child, when it is too much to handle alone and Levi seeks physical contact from Erwin, scrabbles up Erwin’s chest like a child in a nightmare.

  
Of course, blistering skin and splitting vocal cords are not the only ways that Levi’s repentance is paid from his body. Something so simple as brushing a rosary makes Levi’s skin raise, and he wraps the beads around his hand, unwraps, wraps once more, biting back on the hints of moans. Erwin stands still, unable to move. The welts are exquisite to watch, sinking pinkly into his skin in a puff of steam. Breathtakingly quick does it happen.

  
At communion, a stray drop of the blood of Christ leaves a thin, bubbling blister trailing down his chin that scabs and reveals new skin in several heartbeats, but Erwin’s eyes remain on Levi’s mouth long after.

  
;

  
It used to be that the demon drug in a maelstrom with him, a show of thundering clouds that glowed red like the embers of brimstone.

  
“Be not afraid,” Levi had rasped weakly that very first time, little more than a lump of a steaming body barely inside the church doors. He'd woken Erwin that night with pleas for repentance. Erwin had not denied him, had carried him to the altar like a slaughtered sacrifice, Levi’s body hot as the fires of hell.

  
Over the last two years, Erwin has carried the demon several times. The overbearing exhaustion of his atonements leaves him sometimes so drained that Erwin carries him back to the sparse parsonage, though he always so hastily leaves. Erwin likes the warmth of Levi’s body after being littered with burns and he's ashamed to admit how much more he wishes to cradle him.

  
;

  
It is by accident that Erwin discovers a way to ease Levi’s suffering. If the sacraments are tainted by Erwin’s touch, they do not destroy Levi’s flesh. A stray drop fell from the chalice to Erwin’s hand to Levi’s cheek and did not burn.

  
Levi takes the tips of the priest’s fingers in his mouth, the wine running down a blessed palm the barest bit unholy enough to save him the blistering, and one night Levi shows his appreciation for the gesture with his tongue lapping at the stained fingers. Erwin finds his hand cupping at Levi’s jaw, smearing the evidence of the wine as he whispers hoarsely, “May the peace of God be with you.”

  
“And also,” Levi recites, looking up through lidded eyes, his voice an audible invitation to hell, “with you, Father.”

  
;

  
If the priest’s hands get wayward, it is between him and a demon and God alone. Because Levi is so easy to touch, so temptingly _easy_ for Erwin to explore.

  
Erwin does not hide his fascination with Levi’s four fangs. They fall in the place of canines, like longer and more brutal counterparts. Levi watches Erwin through half-glazed eyes as Erwin runs the pad of his thumb along the sharp tips, so sensitive that Levi shivers with every pass.

  
“Do you turn others when you bite them?”

  
Levi swats the inquisitive hand away to speak, the way he moves his mouth concealing his secret. “Demons cannot make more demons.”

  
“How were you made into a demon?” Erwin cups his dismissed hand around the nape of Levi’s neck, stroking at the line where hair begins.

  
Levi shifts where he straddles the priest and shrugs. “I begged to God and when He didn't answer, I made a deal with Lucifer instead.” And he says it so nonchalantly, as if he went to different grocery store than usual, not sold his soul. Erwin’s ribs tighten.

  
“What did you beg for?” Erwin presses his lips to Levi’s forehead.

  
“My mother to be healed.”

  
“Was she?” Erwin whispers, already fearing and knowing the answer. The Devil cannot give life, only take it. Levi knows he knows, shakes his head, heavy.

  
;

  
And the priest cannot control the way it grips him, how it runs up his spine and ignites his mind a fury.

  
_“The sin of fornication, with a man.”_

  
Father Erwin festers. He thinks of Levi with twisting in his gut. It is seething. How dare this demon show himself so intimately to Erwin. _How dare_ Levi flit around like a courtship only to give his body to another? Erwin pulls away, becomes cruel and distant in his absolution, his righteous anger justified, his own shame a catalyst. How could he have let his heart yearn for this hellbound creature of sin? Levi is everything Erwin cannot be and he weighs Erwin down.

  
Just as he begins to cool, Levi confesses _it_ again and this time Erwin slams the holy book shut, uses it to pound blistering retribution into Levi’s jaw with one solid swing.

  
Erwin knows the sounds of pleasure, and he knows that there are people with proclivities for pain, and somehow he is unsurprised when a delicate little gasp leaves the demon’s mouth.

  
“Unholy creature,” Erwin spits. The love and kindness is gone from his heart in this moment, replaced with a wicked disgust for this farce, this mockery of salvation that Levi begs for. Erwin’s jealousy is an ugly disease in his blood.

  
Levi is sprawled on his side. He murmurs, “No more unholy than you, Father. I can smell the heat in your blood, not just from anger.”

  
Erwin drops the Bible and the _thump_ of it deafens. All he can hear is the pumping of his heart in his ears; Levi’s hoarse whisper, _“Lust.”_

  
“Get out.”

  
Levi cocks his head. “You would deny a willing servant of God?”

  
“You are no servant of God.” And this time, Erwin truly spits on Levi. “You are a vile demon from Hell sent to torment me.”

  
;

  
Levi does not come on Sunday nights after that; it takes Father Erwin two weeks longer than he's willing to admit to correlate the absence with the new presence in the back-most pew during Sunday morning services. His ears strain during prayer to hear Levi's splitting voice, and Erwin is ashamed to know that Levi's voice in holy word is an orchestra composed of seven.

  
Levi does not take communion with the congregation, so the priest takes to leaving a small share hidden from view at the altar. Unable to determine who keeps leaving the backdoor to the fellowship hall open, Erwin makes an easy assumption.

  
One Sunday, Levi gets caught up in the pleasantries, cornered before he can flee by a deacon yammering about the upcoming potluck. The demon nods along with closed-lipped smiles and Erwin stares as Levi’s eyes cut to his suddenly, an instructive, septacorded cry, _Get me out of here, Father._

  
Erwin's feet push him forward at the demon’s command.

  
“Levi,” he greets, clasping a hand on his shoulder. “I'm glad to see you again.”

  
“Yes,” Levi says, opening his mouth as little as possible. “Father, may I speak to you in private?”

  
“Of course,” Erwin smiles back politely, fondly, sincere. He quarter-turns and points Levi in the right direction. “My study is open.”

  
Levi nods at Erwin and then at the deacon before scampering off in a desperate stride.

  
“Please pardon Levi,” Erwin tells his deacon. After socialising with his congregation, Erwin locks the church’s doors and takes his time retrieving the communion he left on the altar for the demon hiding in his study.

  
Levi is smouldering heap on Erwin’s floor, afflicted by the light shining through stained glass portrait of the crucifixion. The blood and body of Christ exacerbate his suffering.

  
“I want to be baptised,” Levi rasps after the drapes are pulled, after Erwin’s sat him in the armchair and wrapped a prayer shawl around his shoulders. “Baptise me, Father.”

  
Erwin knelt at Levi’s feet to administer communion and does not move, does not speak, cannot blink.

  
“Baptise me,” Levi repeats. “Destroy me. Drown me. Father, give me back to God. I want to be free.”

  
Erwin ignores the way his pulse quickens; he is merely a servant.  
  
;

  
Should Levi combust, Erwin would rather lose his own sparse home than the church, so he fills his bathtub deep with cold water. After the water is ready and blessed, Erwin goes to Levi, finds him staring at the only framed photo on display, Erwin at seminary standing between his parents.

  
“So you've always looked all serious and creepy?”

  
Erwin joins him as he rolls his sleeves up. “I'm afraid I don't understand.”

  
Levi draws his shoulders in. “You know, sometimes when you read a scripture, you get this look on your face.” And suddenly, Levi morphs into a smaller replica of Erwin, scrunching his eyebrows together and frowning sternly.

  
“It's like,” Levi says in a mimic of the priest, “you've got diarrhea and you're trying to keep it in.”

  
Erwin’s barking laugh makes Levi startle and hiss and transform back into himself. A longing grips in his chest, a melancholic desire to have gotten to know Levi more outside of the church.

  
“Is there anything I can do for you before we go?”

  
Levi shakes his head and looks down at their feet before he trails his gaze up Erwin’s body to finally settle on his face. “I'm tired, Father. I'm ready to go home.”

  
The water’s initial response to Levi is to steam. His skin turns red but stays intact while Erwin goes through the formalities.

  
“Your name to God, my child.”

  
“Levi.”

  
“Levi, do you love God with all your heart and wish to serve him for the rest of your life?” Erwin is settled on his knees, one of his hands eclipsing the back of the demon's head, the other on his chest, the heart within like a hummingbird with fright.

  
“Do you repent of your sins and vow to follow God’s Word?”

  
“Yes.” Levi swallows, so very clearly afraid for the first time that Erwin has ever seen. His hands come to Erwin’s forearm and squeeze while he blinks slowly with a deep inhale.

  
“Then Levi, I baptise you,” Erwin murmurs, leaning in close, the hand on Levi’s chest sliding up to Levi’s throat, fingers stroking before taking a firm grip. Levi’s fingers flex around Erwin’s forearm, he swallows, adam’s apple bobbing against the palm pressing into it. “In the name of the Father, in the name of the Son, and in the name of the Holy Spirit.”

  
When Erwin plunges him under, Levi screams and the water springs into a rolling boil, Erwin’s skin, holy, unaffected-- but under his hand, he feels Levi’s skin blistering, bubbling, popping, repeatedly. Screaming, skin burning off and healing and burning off faster, and the baptismal bath is letting out enough steam to push the priest’s hair back, and Erwin feels iron bars around his lungs as he looks at Levi one last time, Levi in _agony_ , boiling alive, and Erwin holds him under until tears are streaming down his cheeks while Levi evaporates under his palm. 


	2. Chapter 2

“Remember, o Lord, Your child Levi,” Erwin prays. The time for rites expired three years ago, but the priest carries that night with him, relives it every time he lays his head to rest.

  
Sometimes, he humours the idea that Levi’s neat stack of clothing-- rolled socks and boxers inside shoes on top of a folded shirt on top of folded jeans-- to be the culprit behind his bad dreams, but he has never convinced himself to discard them. It feels _wrong_ to consider it even, so it sits on Erwin’s dresser collecting dust instead.

  
The world is losing its glimmer. Erwin saw glimpses of Hell through Levi and now nothing wonderful compares. All Erwin sees is the suffering and it makes his heart squeeze with yearning for things divine. Slowly, Erwin begins to resent his congregation, the gift of their painless forgiveness. The joy he used to feel when he preached to them is replaced with bone-grinding weariness, because he knows that none will take his lessons to heart as dearly as Levi did, none will repent as devoutly. None compare.

  
Erwin steps down not long after the weed of resentment takes root in his mind, finds he's better suited as a chaplain at a hospice. He still attends his church on Sundays and some still address him as _Father_ but Erwin feels so far from God, so lost and uncertain. Levi was born, he was a babe and a child and he grew into adulthood as a servant of God and yet he became a demon in the desperation for his mother’s health when God did not answer. It confuses Erwin why he finds himself angry at God on Levi’s behalf, when Erwin has reassured many at bedside that they will see their beloveds again in the New Kingdom.

  
But Erwin knows he won't see Levi there, and that gives him a hollow hopelessness. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sexual content in chapter three ;)


	3. Chapter 3

Erwin hangs suspended over his own body, looking down while the emergency room staff runs frantically to resuscitate him.

  
Pneumonia is not always so fatal, but Erwin has been working himself weary between the hospice, the mission, and the rescue, barely leaving time for himself to catch up on sleep and revitalise. It was foolish of him to let his illness worsen unchecked, but it was also the punishment he imposed on himself. Levi's been gone for four years, but he still haunts Erwin like it was a day ago that the priest boiled the demon alive in a baptism. Because Levi died by his hand, Erwin uses every excuse he can to chastise himself and make his life miserable. He deserves as much. From the outside, he must look like a martyr, pouring so much of himself into helping others while forgetting to help himself, and Erwin wishes for some newly-revealed sin to wipe away his good deeds and deny him posthumous praise.

  
He does not want to be seen as a hero in his community but it's out of his hands now, he knows.

  
Erwin can feel the CPR tugging him back toward his body but he resists the pull. _This_ feels good, this form of not-quite existence, the spirit side where he can see the truth of every human. The nurse pumping his chest has an aura with small white wings, as do many of the others around, their passage into heaven no doubt secured by their good doing.

  
And he can also see a familiar figure coming nearer, looking like a parent ready to scold a naughty child, but Erwin is so filled with a moment of pleasure that he can hardly address the one approaching him.

  
“Erwin the Baptist,” Levi snickers. “The Angelmaker. Revered among Us. Stop being so pathetic.” Levi strokes Erwin’s hand and drags Erwin’s soul closer to his body, pushing him back into himself. He's halfway in before he realises what is happening-- Erwin feels like he's drowning, struggling to escape from the powerful hold of his body.

  
“God is not done with you, you only turned your back on Him,” Levi says, and it sounds… offended. “Wallowing in your self pity for freeing me, without considering what I wanted more.”

  
The flesh of his body is cold cement and Erwin is struggling, drowning, unable to wrench his soul free again. He wants to scream but there is no way to.

  
Levi spreads his black and white wings like he's preening for Erwin, like he's showing off and Erwin wants to deny it because he is but a man, an unholy man, stinking of sin and lust and ten-thousand terrible things, there is no way _he_ set Levi free into this new afterlife.

  
“You don't believe me?” Levi steps close to where Erwin is only head and shoulders free of his body, still fighting to release himself.

 _  
I deserve Hell for what I did to you_ , Erwin thinks and Levi smirks at him, grins with teeth and fangs.

  
“Redeemer of demons, you make _angels_ , but you're too caught up in your guilt to hear God speaking.” Levi smoothes Erwin’s hair back from his forehead. “Shut your fucking mouth and listen.”

  
Levi presses Erwin down, caresses him back into his body so wholly and Erwin gasps awake again, locked solidly in the confines of the physical world. The nurse hovering over him yelps in surprised relief as he breathes of his own accord and blinks up at her.

  
Later, when Erwin is safely back in a hospital room to recover with an antibiotic drip, the nurse will tell him that God told her not to give up even after the doctor wanted to record a time of death.

  
And when Erwin quiets and prays, truly _prays_ for the first time from his heart and not of recitation, he sees God with a band of angels, with _Levi_ , at His right hand.

  
;

  
Strangers show up to his door in the middle of the night and call him The Baptist and with every one he redeems, God gets closer, louder. Guilt means to eat away at him but he dreams of hands in his hair and kisses on his neck and it soothes the condemnation he wants to wrap himself in.

  
And he can see _them_ now, in their renewed glory, the glory that God gives them through him… and he sees Levi afar in the crowd. Levi comes and goes as he's told, to Heaven or Hell, and he looks so much happier than Erwin ever saw him as a demon. It makes it clearer to Erwin how much Levi loves God, why he tortured himself with repentance to stay in God’s graces.

  
When Erwin left the parsonage years ago, he took up residence in a small bungalow by the train yard, and he's grateful not to have neighbours in tight quarters to brown-nose why people enter his home, fill it with screams, and never leave.

  
Sometimes, Erwin catches dark movement in the corner of his eye, like a shying houseguest.

  
More often than not, should Erwin sing a hymn, someone is echoing along with him.

  
And there's the issue of Levi’s stack of clothes having been washed, folded, and set back on Erwin’s dresser like it had never been moved.

  
It's not a haunting, it's not a hunt. It's home.

  
;

  
Levi starts to show himself around a year after he gives Erwin life again, revealing glimpses of himself until finally, Erwin comes home to find Levi sitting at the kitchen table, unassumingly human, flipping through a newspaper.

  
Erwin is a little thrown off by the sight. Aside from a few moments in the hospital, he hasn't properly spoken to Levi since Levi’s baptism.

  
“You walk among us,” Erwin blurts, because until his eyes were opened, he always had assumed that angels were unseen miraculous beings. Demons, he'd learned by Levi, were bound to the land, but he'd never thought that maybe angels could choose to be the same.

  
Levi smirks but finishes reading the passage he's on before he folds the newspaper and puts it down on the table. Slowly, he says, “We do.”

  
A half step forward and Erwin says, “I prayed for you every day.”

  
“I know.” Levi rises.

  
“I dreamt of you, how I… how I _drowned_ you.”

  
“I know.” Levi steps closer.

  
“And you… you've been….”

  
“Yes.” Levi closes the distance. His hands hesitate for a moment where he reaches up to touch Erwin’s face and this time Erwin moves to connect them, bending so that he settles his jaw into the cradle made by Levi’s hands.

  
“Levi, you must know,” Erwin murmurs, closing his eyes, relishing the feel of Levi’s fingers in his beard along his skin. “You _must_ know that I love you.”

  
“I know,” Levi whispers. “I waited for you to call for me in earnest before I revealed myself, but you're a goddamned idiot, Erwin.”

  
Erwin wraps his arms around the angel’s shoulders and holds him tightly. “I never was good at anything but scripture.”

  
“You hit me with scripture once,” Levi says slowly. “Because of what I confessed to you. But Father… to lust after someone means you commit the sin in your heart, and when I confessed, it was for my thoughts of you.”

  
A warm nose presses into the underside of Erwin’s chin and he answers that seeking with a kiss. Divinely, Levi shivers.

  
“More,” he whispers when Erwin pulls back, lifting onto his toes to chase Erwin’s mouth, rewarded with another kiss when he ensnares his prey. Erwin surrenders to Levi’s desire.

  
“I am my beloved’s,” Levi rasps sweetly, breathlessly, after too many too heated kisses. “And my beloved is mine.”

  
“Are you making us one?” Erwin bends to nip at the puffy bottom lip he was devouring a moment ago. Levi’s answering mouth is confirmation enough.

  
;

  
It takes Erwin less time than he would have thought to grow accustomed to Levi entering and leaving his bed in all hours of the night. The interruptions always give welcome to naked skin twining, until every midnight nudging makes Erwin’s blood hum with sweet anticipation.

  
Early spring is making a wet mess of its nights, drowning out the daytime’s hard-won residual warmth with boisterous thunderstorms. One such night, when Levi slithers back into bed, his human side is wound up tightly and fidgets endlessly, until Erwin rouses enough to drag the angel under his sleep-heavy body.

  
“Get off me,” Levi mumbles beneath Erwin’s weight, but the priest pretends to ignore the request. As soon as Levi quiets, Erwin can feel himself slipping into a more unnatural corner of sleep, something that is easily outted as divinely artificial.

  
“Wanna see some shit?” Levi asks in that smug way of his, knowing Erwin cannot resist the visions he gives.

  
“Always.” Erwin gladly steps into the trap. Levi’s secrets are fiercely guarded, and any small peek is to be drunk up as quick as possible.

  
“Get off me first,” Levi bargains and Erwin rolls, willing. Taking the littlest bit of leeway, Levi pushes him firmly on his back and stretches out over him, knees forcing their way under bulky thighs, lifting. The sloppy cunt he made of Erwin’s hole hours ago is still there, beckoning, welcoming with a squelch.

  
Entwined intimately, Levi takes them into the vision back to the night that Erwin’s jealousy got the best of him. Their roles are reversed; it is Erwin on his knees begging forgiveness, it is Levi above him in holy robes, granting.

  
“The sin of fornication, with a man,” Erwin hears himself saying, looking up to Levi. It is not the orientation of the sex that makes it a sin, but the sex itself.

  
An ugly ripple of hatred flashes through Levi as he slams the Bible closed and grips it, swings it, connects with Erwin’s cheekbone and jaw. There's pain, yes, from the blow, and it's mingling with a burning as Erwin’s skin rejects the holy text to create… pleasantness. Secretly within those, Erwin feels a tightness in his spine, tingling downward. As he falls sideways, he lets out a small gasping moan.

  
Levi does not follow script. He kneels, clutching a rosary, before Erwin. “Does that feel good, demon?”

  
Erwin nods, half of his own volition, half compelled. His hips rut forward on the confines of his clothing, the same pair of black jeans Levi always wore, the same hooded sweatshirt. The dreamscape relieves him of it, flesh suddenly bare but he feels no shame, no reason to hide.

  
“Get up.” Levi has a prayer sash around Erwin’s wrists in a heartbeat, Erwin stretched out and straining on his toes up towards Christ’s feet on the cross.

  
The finely beaded rosary whips over Erwin’s chest and makes him grit against the overwhelming duality of pain and pleasure. There is never more than a single welt marring him at a time, no matter how quick the succession. His blood sings like the moans he's making. Even as he slumps and lets his restraints bare his weight, he stays stretched up beautifully for Levi as Levi makes his skin steam.

  
“It wasn't all torture,” Levi muses sweetly in a brief reprieve, nuzzling at the junction of Erwin’s pelvis. In an instant, Erwin is not longer strung up, but instead sitting on the back-most pew.

  
“How many, my child?” Levi whispers into his ear. He's so close, so open and vulnerable.

  
“Eight,” Erwin mutters despite himself, compelled into the response. And through the death rites, his voice splits from singular into several, and it hurts to pray, but he prays anyway. Can't _not_. Levi continues to show Erwin scenes from their time together during his demonhood, and when he finally pulls Erwin from the dreamscape, the priest is choking and sputtering hard with orgasm.

  
“You're magnificent.” Erwin can only lay there and huff between breaths. He's cum all over his own stomach, ribbons drying alongside Levi’s. “You're glorious.”

  
“So is the one that made me,” Levi says. He wipes away the sweat on a damp brow not his own. “Not just the one that knew me in my mother's womb.”

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I take prompts too

**Author's Note:**

> forgive me fandom for i have sinned [again](https://minxiebutt.tumblr.com)


End file.
